In Focus

For the past several weeks, our office has been secretly planning a surprise to honor one of our own.

With Dave’s 80th birthday approaching, just days after the Clarissa Summerfest, and his 60-year anniversary of working with the paper, we knew we had to do something special. Since the Clarissa Summerfest parade would take place on Saturday evening, we decided it would be a great idea to celebrate him in the parade.

Typically, it’s challenging for our paper to participate in a parade since we are stretched thin this time of year covering town festivals and events.

Fortunately, everything fell into place, allowing most of the staff to participate, so we began our planning behind Dave’s back.

I love that Clarissa chooses a different holiday theme each year, and this year’s theme just happened to be Halloween, which is my personal favorite. I know Dave loves Halloween, too, although his favorite holiday is Christmas. It’s wonderful how he embraces all the holidays, and our office is always decorated for each one, thanks to Dave.

He also decorates his house every year for the holidays and goes all out at Halloween and Christmas. We definitely share a passion for decorating.

When he was down-sizing and cleaning out his sheds and garage, I ended up taking most of his decorations because he knew I would take care of them and put them to good use. He always drives by to see what I’ve put out for the light show. I even customized one of the Santa blow molds he gave me to include the office staff’s names on Santa’s list, with his name at the top.

Planning the Halloween-themed float was straightforward since I was bringing all the decorations. The 12-foot skeleton, Skelly, and the seven-foot dog, Doggo, made fantastic additions to the float. Naturally, I had to include most of the Halloween blow molds, all of which came from Dave.

To honor him, we decided to put him on a throne. We agreed he would be the “King” so we got him a quality crown and sash, along with a custom made t-shirt. I transformed a chair into the “Bone Throne”.

Next came the logistics: what we would wear, the signs, and who was responsible for doing what during the parade. It’s fantastic to work in a place where we can create all of the things needed in-house! We had custom “Spooktacular” shirts made, even one for Skelly, and, of course, “Happy Birthday Dave” signs.

We then coordinated a plan to meet up and decorate the float. Hewitt also held their parade that day, which started at noon. This allowed me to participate in that parade and use the company van to transport all the decorations to Clarissa, where a trailer would be waiting for us to decorate.

We made sure to tell Dave about the parade and that most of the staff would be on the float, but we kept the fact that it was to honor him entirely secret until he saw the float.

The parade went wonderfully! We had a lot of fun and even returned along the parade route to have everyone on Main Street help us sing “Happy Birthday” to Dave.

It was heartwarming to celebrate such a significant milestone with someone who has brought so much joy to our office and the community.